It is important that there should be more thorough investigations of DUP, its correlates, and the extent to which it does mediate any advantages of earlier intervention.

Interventions to reduce treatment delay should increase the public's awareness of the symptoms of psychotic illness and the need to seek treatment, but of equal importance is the education of service providers to recognize such illness and the potential benefits of earlier intervention.

No abstract

Improving adherence to medication early in the course of treatment may be an important intervention to improve short-term outcome.

Empirical research concerning the relationship between life event stressors and schizophrenia is critically reviewed. In accordance with the view that patients suffering from schizophrenia are vulnerable to stress, there is evidence of a relationship between stressors and variation in severity of symptoms over time. There is less indication that schizophrenic patients have had higher levels of stressors than the general population or than patients suffering from other psychiatric disorders. These findings are consistent with vulnerability-stress models of the development of schizophrenia.

The results highlight the importance of recognizing the complex nature of the concept of quality of life. They demonstrate that varying indices of quality of life are likely to have different predictors.

No abstract

In addition to pre-morbid adjustment potentially malleable variables such as level of residual (but not acute) symptoms, adherence to medication and cognitive deficits are likely to influence outcome on aspects of community functioning in individuals treated for first episode of psychosis.